Transport Fever 2

Transport Fever 2 is a game that I would say caters more to people that are interested in building and watching their own "tabletop" creations rather than looking for a deep and complex simulation. Building rail networks and watching trains noodle their way around, watching jet planes take off and land, or watching a 16 wheeler travel the country side. It's certainly entertaining in that regard, but I find it just makes me more attracted to playing other games that specialize in those areas. Like Factorio for a more deep and complex production and train simulation, or MS Flight Sim for aviation, or American/Euro Truck Simulator to drive around the country. Overall I would say this game worth getting if you don't mind a simpler experience (less busy-work). Pros: 1. Good graphics, sound, and music to keep you engaged. 2. A wide variety of vehicles to chose from. 3. Fun and simple game once you learn the ropes. 4. Has a campaign to teach you the fundamentals, but it's a bit light on details. 5. Decent road & rail editor with good snapping. Cons: 1. Not a deep or complex simulation game if that's what you're looking for. 2. Factory production uses a controlled model of supply and demand. Rather than factories continuously produce and stockpile, this game only produces when a link is setup with a consumer and it will only produce enough product per transport run to satisfy the consumer. This takes getting use to if you come from other games like Banished, Factorio, Anno Series, X-series, etc. 3. Vehicles unlock at certain dates and become unpurchasable once their production expire. This hurts your ability to build how you want and you're always forced to purchase the more expensive options. 4. The game doesn't do a good job at explaining problems. I often had to google to understand certain things, most of which solutions came from similar problems in their first game. 5. Game balancing needs to be tuned. Lots of boring AFK'ing in the early years.

100+ hours played: as others have mentioned, there is little challenge here. There are no opposing companies to compete against like the old Transport Tycoon games. It's hard to truly screw up as well; running out of money doesn't spell disaster, borrow over and over from the bank with no real consequence, eventually your lines will start making money as towns and production grows. Great for relaxing sandbox play but renders the management experience shallow. The campaign is tedious (sorry devs), little more than an extended tutorial with some silly treasure-hunt elements. Go for free play as soon as you are ready. Here is where TF2s best features come through; enjoy building intricate transport networks across your map, sit back and watch people and cargo move through your meticulously planned systems, tinker and improve, integrate new vehicles etc. It's mainly about trains though. The depth of options for building and routing rail networks is so much greater than road, sea and air, which is a shame. To get the most out of TF2, you need to play Free Play starting at the earliest year (1850) on the largest map with the year advancement turned down to slowest. This gives you the best opportunity to build big networks and really utilise the new vehicles as they become available. If you play faster then loads of the vehicles become pointless as you aren't yet ready to afford them and by the time you are, its 2050 and there is no point buying anything other than the most modern stuff. If you play like I've suggested above, then TF2 really sings and you get to try out everything it really has to offer.

Oh my, this game is pretty great. The first game that I can remember that brings back those sim city warm and fuzzies. The campaign is very flawed.. The bonus quests are a complete mindless slog, before long you will dread getting the little side quest pop-ups to do something completely arbritrary. They are placed clearly to let you tinker with something while you wait for resources to be gathered... but my goodness, what a waste of time. The missions themselves have you slashing and burning what you just did to make room for some new random demand, which is also a bit demoralizing. That said the different flavors of the missions are a welcomed feature. Now.. the freegame shines! At first it seems like a wall of of questions glaring at you, but as you begin to tinker and tinker, it really starts to unfold. Constant failure leads to new approaches, more failure, and the sweet nector of success! You could easily just find a guide and get the roadmap laid out for you, but that seems to defeat the purpose of this game, which is sinking your teeth into a big train set sandbox full of riddles to be answered.

It's better than Railway Empire, One or Two, but the missions need some work. I mainly play free mode due to this, but I like to play missins sometimes, so I have a problem with not being able to just pick a mission rather than doing them in order (to unlock them all) because some of them are just stupid, boring, or a grind. For example, there is a missing where you build a whole city's worth of production etc, then your last job is to DELETE EVERYTHING you just built. Thanks, but no thanks. Yet I have to play it to move to the next one. Sad but true. While you might learn some things about the game, you can figure them out in free mode just as well. Finally, I have had, and played, this game for years and the last update was a major one to add controller support, but they didn't do anything to make the missions better or more interesting, or add more of them, or anything like that. And I think a controller would be a long way around doing stuff. I'll stay with K&M. More missions that were more fun to play would be a nice addition as long as I can just pick and play without the unlock.

So far, no help to get mods working on GoG version. That would deserve at least two more stars.